As I ascended the stairs leading to the tower, I recollected that I had the key of Serafín’s room in my pocket, and that I ought to find out how he was getting on. He must be snoring by this time, I thought, as I opened the door. I shaded the candle with my hand, and peered in to see what the poor drunken creature was doing. As I looked at his bed, where I thought he was lying, the acolyte arose from the floor at my feet, where he was crouched, laughing and showing his ugly teeth like an ape.
“You little beast, what are you doing there?” I said. “A nice mess you’ve made of it to-day. You ought to be whipped. Were you praying on account of your sins? Come, get into bed at once, or I’ll—give you a good one!”
He rose up. His small eyes gleamed with a cat-like phosphorescence; his face was still distorted, and his stiff red hair put the finishing touch to his wild and impish appearance.
“I don’t want to go to sleep,” he cried, grating his teeth. “I am enjoying a free performance, and I have a private box to myself.”
“What do you mean, you toad?”
“It’s true. Look for yourself.”
His meaning flashed through my mind, and I kneeled down quickly to look in the direction in which the acolyte was pointing. The bridal chamber was directly underneath the tower. I knew it, and quickly recalled that fact before I looked. The ceiling was not plastered, but the beams were left bare, and through a crack in the floor of our story, as the room underneath was lighted, we could see perfectly all that was going on.
I shuddered as I became convinced that I was actually looking into the bridal chamber. It was true! I could see it! I could see it! What a dreadful discovery! I restrained myself so as not to cry out, and so that I might remain there motionless, instead of scraping the floor and rattling its boarding in my insane fury. Fortunately, by chance, by the will of God, there was nothing going on in the room. It was entirely empty. At either side of the toilet table a pink-colored candle was burning in a brass candlestick. There was another one, in a porcelain candlestick, on a stand behind the large bronze bed. Flowers, roses especially, were scattered around everywhere; on the tables, on the desk, on the toilet table, even in hanging-baskets. What a profanation of nature! Roses for such a nuptial night! The very solitude of the place, the strange silence, worked on my imagination to such an extent that I even fancied I could smell the roses which impregnated the atmosphere of the room below. I seemed to hear through the open window the notes of the nightingale, which usually sang in the orange tree at that hour of the night, and also its fluttering about in the climbing plants in the court. The whiteness of the half-opened bed, the quiet of the room, the graceful toilet table with its vaporous lace folds falling to the floor, all excited me, rendered me wild, and increased the tumult which raged in my heart. My temples throbbed, and I seemed to feel something like the singing of the sea in my ears, for as I stooped down the blood rushed to my head, and I felt like roaring.
The acolyte touched me on the shoulder.
“Look here, monsieur comrade, that is not fair,” he growled. “I also have eyes to see with.”